A couple of weeks ago a Japanese government representative here in New York handed me an interesting pamphlet called "A Guide to Japanese Ingredients," listing food producers and their ingredients, as well as a few recipes. One dish in particular caught my eye, for onion salad. The restaurant Yakitori Totto (which I love and should have mentioned in my restaurant post!) features it and it's fantastic. It's a kind of aemono, "dressed things," which, according to "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art," is Japanese-style salad of several raw or cooked and cooled ingredients tossed with a dressing. Typical aemono dressings are vinegar-based and thickened with pureed tofu, ground sesame or miso. Just like the one in the recipe below. This dish makes a tasty small plate to accompany sake at the beginning of a meal. (But I would lose the raw garlic; too overpowering I think.)
2 Medium white or red onions
10 Shiso leaves
Dressing:
2 T red miso
2 t vinegar
2 t sugar
½ t garlic, minced
3 T water
Katsuo bushi for garnish (dried, shaved bonito)
Thinly slice onions and soak in a bowl of cold water for ten minutes. Afterwards, place the onions in a kitchen towel and wring out the liquid. Do it in batches. This is a technique I learned at Matsuri to squeeze some of the bitterness out of the onions, and also help them keep longer.
Julienne the shiso by stacking the leaves then rolling them up and thinly slicing. Mix the miso, vinegar, sugar, water, and garlic in a bowl and whisk. The recipe calls for red miso, which is a wonderful salty, aged miso, but I mixed in a little saikyo miso, a lightly fermented sweeter miso to see how that would work (was pretty good). Don't hesitate to try other kinds of miso or mixtures of them.
Arrange onions on a plate and sprinkle julienned shiso on top. Pour dressing over and garnish with katsuo bushi.
(For more information on aemono, check out this link, this one, and this video, too (excuse the overbearing soundtrack!).
Posted by Harris Salat in Recipes | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this story
Takako Kuratani is a prodigious chef who designs menus for Japanese restaurants around the world, styles food for Japanese movies and TV commercials, develops recipes, teaches Japanese cuisine -- and never stops cooking and experimenting. I was fortunate to meet her last year at her test kitchen in Tokyo where she and her team treated me to a fantastic dinner. (Ah, the joys of writing... :)) Besides being incredibly talented, Takako is utterly gracious and kind, and thorough emails has been teaching me about Japanese ingredients and cooking. She just visited New York and one of the things she brought with her was a slender red notebook -- her own personal cookbook, where she records her recipes and cooking inspiration. While she was here, Takako planted herself in a kitchen, cracked opened that little red book and prepared a wonderful homey dinner for a bunch of friends. Her theme: the down-home cooking of Kyushu, Japan's own Deep South.
I asked Takako to share a recipe for one of her dishes, and she graciously offered her take on fried chicken -- hey, appropriately Southern! What I found fascinating about this dish is that instead of marinating the chicken, coating in egg and rolling in flour, the way I expected it to go, Takako prepared the chicken the other way around: She dusted it in flour, then coated it in egg and, after deep frying, dipped it in the marinade. It's a technique that evokes tempura. Takako explained that this is a Kyushu style of deep frying that produces really tender chicken. Tender -- and absolutely delicious.
Another interesting thing about this dish is how ingredients and foods adapted from the West, like ketchup, mayonnaise and tartar sauce, have made their way into modern Japanese cooking, but with a uniquely local twist: A traditional rouge-colored Kyoto pickle, for example, replaced the capers of a typical tartar sauce. And the marinade calls for the imaginatively (!) named Vegetable and Fruit Sauce, a condiment that seems distantly related to prepared barbecue sauce.
Here's the recipe. Let me know what you think when you try it!
Marinade
1/3 cup vinegar
1/3 cup mirin
2T soy sauce
4T sugar
1 T ketchup
1T Vegetable and Fruit Sauce (available at Japanese food stores)
squeeze lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
Chicken
2 lb thigh and legs deboned
Salt and pepper
Unbleached flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 quart cooking oil (rice bran, canola or other high smoke point vegetable oil)
Tartar Sauce
1C mayonnaise (homemade if you can)
2 boiled eggs, chopped
2T chopped onions
2T chopped shibazuke (Kyoto-style salt-pickled eggplant, available at Japanese food stores)
2T chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces, salt and pepper and set aside.
Heat oil in a saucepan over medium flame. The oil should be at least two or three inches deep, for deep frying.
Prepare the marinade by mixing all the ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.
Prepare the tartar sauce by mixing all the ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.
Deep fry the chicken: Lightly coat the chicken with flour. Break off a tiny piece of the chicken and drop in the oil to check the temperature. When the piece sizzles and floats to the top, the oil is hot and ready (See the May '08 issue of Savuer, p. 104, for more on how to gauge oil temperature without a thermometer). Cook the chicken in batches. Dip a piece of the flour-coated chicken in the egg mixture and gently ease into the oil. Repeat with other pieces, adding them to the oil until you have enough in there without overcrowding. If you add too much chicken at once you'll drop the temperature of the oil and the pieces will fuse together. Cook for about four to five minutes, until the color turns to golden brown. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towel and deep fry the rest of the chicken.
To serve, dip the fried chicken in the marinade to coat, and arrange the pieces on a serving plate (hopefully a nice rustic piece of Japanese pottery!). Pour the tartar sauce over the chicken. Eat while it's hot.
One note: My local Japanese market was out of shibazuke so I substituted a quick and simple salt pickle I made from Japanese-style cucumbers (kyuri). Here's what I did: I rubbed a whole cucumber with Japanese sea salt (any good sea salt or Kosher salt will do, too), wrapped it in plastic wrap with the salt on, and stuck it in the refrigerator to cure overnight. In the morning I rinsed off the salt and sliced the now gently pickled cucumber.
Another note to this recipe: I had a conversation about Japanese-style fried chicken the other night with Ryo, the chef de cuisine of Matsuri, and he suggested another way to enjoy this kind of dish: Layer the fried chicken over a bowl of rice and drizzle marinade (tare in Japanese) on top. Sounds great.
UPDATE: A reader asked me about Japanese markets in the New York area. I shop at Sunrise Mart in the Village and Soho, and Mitsuwa Marketplace in New Jersey. They're both good.
Posted by Harris Salat in Recipes | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this story
At least in my opinion... New York is fortunate to have a sizable Japanese expat community -- and real deal restaurants to serve them. I'm talking about Japanese cuisine beyond sushi, which is just a tiny part of the food culture there, despite its popularity here. Many friends ask me to recommend Japanese joints in the big city, so here I go: Check out the half-dozen restaurants below (listed alphabetically) to discover a world of Japanese cooking from sophisticated cuisine to tapas-like pub food to home style chow. And what about your favorite places? Any Japanese restaurants you want to add? (And not just in New York) Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Aburiya Kinnosuke, 213 E 45th Street, 212-867-5454
What I love about this restaurant is that it feels like stepping into a smart and stylish spot in Tokyo. And then there's the cooking: Aburiya specializes in robata grilling, where meat and fish are skewered and stood upright to slowly caramelize before a neat tower of red-hot Japanese charcoal. Chef Jiro Iida compliments his grilling with a slew of seasonal dishes he prepares in an open kitchen behind a dining counter (which is where you should sit). Besides any and all sublime grilled fish, make sure to try the tsukune, robata-grilled chicken meatball and yakisoba, fried soba noodles with pork in a delicious broth.
En Japanese Brasserie, 435 Hudson Street, 212-647-9196
My friend Reika Yo's restaurant is a hip and beautiful downtown place that serves a sophisticated take on izakaya cooking, the Japanese pub-style dining that centers on a procession of small plates. Chef Honma's knocks out fantastic dishes. Some of my favorites: red perch simmered in soy sauce, natto and ground pork wrapped in lettuce and soy milk hotpot with slices of Kobe beef (outstanding). Also, you must, repeat, must try the freshly made tofu and tofu skin. If you've never tasted real tofu, not the packaged stuff from stores, it's a life-altering experience. Really.
Matsuri, 363 West 16th Street, 212-242-4300
This is the amazing restaurant in whose kitchen I volunteer every week under the tutelage of my friend Chef Tadashi Ono. Chef Ono's deep, deep passion for Japanese cuisine is reflected in his cooking, an incredible seasonal menu with ingredients flown in daily from Japan, from fresh fish to wagyu beef. Try the black cod cured in sakekasu (sake lees), grilled yellowtail collar, duck, octopus sashimi, sakura ebi tempura (tiny seasonal pink shrimp) and on an on. "Matsuri" means festival in Japanese and the restaurant lives up to its name: A cool crowd dining in a huge and dramatic subterranean space with massive paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling.
Riki, 141 East 45th Street, 212-986-1109
Many authentic Japanese restaurants in New York are clustered in the East 40s not far from the United Nations. Why? Well, guess where most offices of the Japanese multinational companies are located? Riki, for instance, is directly across the street from the US headquarters of the trading giant Itochu. It's a down and dirty izakaya that's open late, late (I think until 4am), filled with Japanese office workers knocking back nama biru ("raw" beer, or draft) and plate after tapas-style plate of seasonal comfort food. Ask your server to translate the daily menu they have written on the back of their order pads. The food is terrific. I especially enjoy the Japanafied Western dishes, like "om rice" -- rice mixed with ketchup and wrapped in a crepe-like omelet (!). Sit back and soak up the scene, especially the boisterous "salarymen" in the midst of an enkai, or drinking party.
Sakagura, 211 East 43rd Street, 212-953-7253
Hidden in the basement of a nondescript office building, Sakagura has a long bar running the length of the restaurant, and behind it, rows and rows of sake bottles -- it boasts one of largest sake collections in America. ("Sakagura" means sake brewery in Japanese) Ask my friend Chizuko, their talented sake sommelier, to help you navigate their notebook-sized sake list and find one or two or three for you. Chizuko hails from the heart of Akita sake country and has an amazing knowledge and palette. Sakagura serves a extensive, sophisticated dinner menu of small plates to compliment their sake, include pristine sashimi. Lunch is also a treat, by the way, when Sakagura offers a menu of soba dishes, all with authentic hand rolled and cut noodles.
Tsukushi, 300 East 41st Street, 212-599-8888
Push open a plain black door on sleepy sidestreet enter another restaurant that seems directly transported from Japan: Tsukushi is small, unadorned, brightly and as real as it gets. This place specializes in katei-ryori, home style cooking. There's no menu here; instead the Chef Manabe serves his cooking omakase -- his choice -- a procession of delicious seasonal dishes. They're wonderfully homey and simple, simmered ingredients, stews, grilled fish and sashimi. On my last visit there, this past winter, the chef treated me and my girlfriend to hearty and comforting bowls of motsunabe, tripe hotpot. Talk about soul food! And after 10pm (Tsukushi is open until at least 2am, I believe -- it's an afterwork hangout for Japanese chefs), you can order authentic shoyu ramen, soy sauce ramen, easily the best ramen in New York.
Posted by Harris Salat in Restaurants | Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this story
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